


Icy

by PenelopeAbigail



Series: Whumptober 2020 [21]
Category: Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man (Video Game 2018), Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Day 21, Depictions of a corpse, Gen, Hypothermia, I Don't feel so well, Whump, Whumptober 2020, hurt!Peter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:34:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27133936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PenelopeAbigail/pseuds/PenelopeAbigail
Summary: Spider-Man spends some quality time with himself and the icicles in a freezer.
Series: Whumptober 2020 [21]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1955698
Comments: 3
Kudos: 15
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	Icy

**Author's Note:**

> Day 21!!!  
> Wow, already two-thirds of the way done with Whumptober. This is going by so fast!!  
> How is October already almost over?

They had just been lucky.

If he hadn’t dived headfirst into danger to save a terrified blind man huddled against the wall, they wouldn’t have gotten the upper hand.

They hadn’t even let him finish saving the poor man, and Peter didn’t know if he was okay or not— _or if he was even alive_.

They’d ripped the man out of his arms— _while Peter was reassuring him that ‘everything was going to be okay, Spider-Man was just getting him to safety’_ —well, actually they had ripped Spider-Man out of the man’s arms, but that implied that Spider-Man was the one being carried, and that just confused things.

They’d ripped the man out of his arms with a bullet through his calf to stop his ascent up the wall and then followed that up with not one but three tasers to his back— _the cheating kind that shoots out, the ones with cords_. He hadn’t seen the ground rush up to meet him, but he felt it hit his head and lost consciousness after that.

The point of bringing it up was to say that Spider-Man would absolutely have won the fight if he didn’t have such a big heart, if he didn’t have such a _save first and fight later_ mindset.

Now he was locked in some giant freezer, the kind restaurants have that holds all their frozen foods like that giant pig hanging from the ceiling in the corner, the dead body hanging next to it, and the two cow legs in the other corner, one hanging, the other on the floor like its rope broke.

Peter woke up trembling, shivering from the cold, laying on the floor against the wall by the door as if his body was just dumped there ungracefully— _which was most likely what happened._

His thin Spider-Man suit was nowhere near thick enough to protect him from the cold in any way, and he’d be willing to bet he hasn’t been in the freezer for long. The cold had probably woken him up.

He was shivering violently, yes, but he wasn’t feeling tired yet, nor was he breathing hard. He couldn’t remember all the signs of hypothermia but knew enough about it that being shut up in a freezer— _which normally runs about 20 Fahrenheit to negative 20 Fahrenheit—_ was very bad.

Aside from the immediate cold, what pressed his concerns was the body hanging in the middle of the back wall across from him. It seemed almost as if it were placed in that exact position so that he’d see it when he woke and be freaked out.

It worked.

The eyes were wide and glassy, mouth open with blood droplets frozen to its cheek, and hair icy-white. The deep bruising under its eyes must have frozen quickly to be such a deep purple, and the cheeks were gaunt and hollow. The rope— _an ordinary thing, brown and fraying_ —was around its neck like a noose.

Its clothes were caked in so much ice that Peter couldn’t tell if it be and man or woman, but regardless, devoid of life as it was, it was an _it_ now. Just a lifeless shell, no more gender.

His lungs stuttered in an exhale, his teeth chattering, and he figured he needed to get out before he became an _it_ as well, although he surmised that with his enhanced structure and advantages over humans— _God, thinking of himself as not human always sent shivers down his back, no pun intended—nah, take that back, pun absolutely intended—_ he’d have longer to survive such extreme conditions as these, but he didn’t particularly want to test his limits.

His arms were weak and shaky as he pushed himself onto his feet, and he realized that he must have been in this freezer for longer than he thought because he couldn’t really feel his fingers or toes. Their skin color would show him how bad it was, but he also did not want to remove his shoes or gloves. That was a bad idea.

Of course, there was no handle on the inside of the freezer, but— _but when one door closes, another opens, and no one said it couldn’t be the same door._

The door opened for him, slowly and dramatically, to reveal three big, scary henchmen.

The big guy in the middle laughed, “Y’all hungry? Looks like we’re having spider chili tonight.”

Peter rolled his eyes, not sure what it looked like with this mask on, and mock-laughed, “Haha, you’re just _killing_ me.”

They just sneered and grabbed his arms— _and, for the record, no, he did not focus on how warm their hands were—_ and began dragging him out, which for the first time in his life, he was completely okay with because his own legs were tired and twitchy.

“Lemme guess, you guys thought locking me in the freezer would be cool?”

No reaction, typical. No one appreciates his humor.

“Giving me the cold shoulder, huh? Shouldn’t I be the one doing that?”

His teeth were still chattering like crazy, so he just shut up and tried to warm up faster— _if that was even possible_ , _did he have control of that?_

From the looks of it, this place used to be a small packaging factory, with boxes stacked neatly around the edges of the room, and knifes hanging oh so neatly along the kitchen-ish-looking walls.

Truthfully, Peter wasn’t sure what such a building should look like, having never been inside one, but he assumed that’s what this was. He could be wrong, but he didn’t think so.

They dragged him up some stairs and into a small office where they deposited him unceremoniously on the floor. He proudly stood tall by himself, albeit on shaky legs. _How long would it take for his body to heat back up? The air felt like it was boiling him alive because it was so different from the freezer’s temp._

“You don’t look so well, Spider-Man,” The chair behind the desk turned, and a man sat dramatically with his fingers peaked. A bead of sweat dripped down the side of his face, near his ear. Maybe it wasn’t just him, maybe the temperature was actually very high.

‘Oh, me? I’m just _solid_ ,” he quipped, and _okay, yeah, that was a bad one._

As Peter surveyed the man, his brain filled in no blanks. He didn’t recognize him, didn’t recognize anything around them, didn’t have the faintest clue where they were. Who was this guy?

“I’ll cut to the chase since you probably don’t want to be here any more than I do,” he stood up and vaulted the desk, leaning against the opposite side, “I know you’ve been hunting Tombstone, we’ve been watching you.”

He didn’t want to be here? He knew Pete’s been hunting Tombstone? They’ve been watching him?

“Um, that’s called stalking, and that’s illegal. I’m going to have to report you to the police. May I get a name for the paperwork?”

The man chuckled and ignored him, “We don’t want you to stop, but we know you’re MO.”

_Okay?_

So?

Was this guy implying that they wanted him to carry on as he has been? Why’d they terrorize that block, pick a fight with him, kidnap him and lock him in a freezer if they were just going to tell him _good job_?

Peter’s jaw was still chattering and was slow on the uptake because he was going to talk back to this man to make a point about his tenacity, but the guy just kept talking— _this chill that has settled in his bones was determined to wreck him, slowing him down and locking his jaw._

“You like to beat people up, leave them in the hospitals with hefty bills to pay, and hopefully send them to jail.”

Well, he wasn’t wrong, “A-and I’ll do the same with—with Tombstone and any other crim—criminal that threatens this city.” _God, he was stuttering. This was so embarrassing!_

The man just smiled and nodded, continued, “But you see, powerful men never stay in jail, which is why Wilson Fisk took so long to be pinned down.”

He got up close and personal to Peter, staring him down and breathing on his face, but Peter stood firm— _the quaking in his boots was from the cold,_ not _from fear, thank you very much._

The man stayed silent, though, so Peter— _who was thankfully warming up so that his teeth were back under control—_ retorted, “And yet I took him down anyway.”

Another beat of silence while the man stared him down. His spidey-sense told him the men behind him were shifting, but that wasn’t concerning. He spoke again, “So you want me to put Tombstone behind bars permanently. I’m no lawyer, but—“ and he shrugged nonchalantly to match his words, but the man cut him off, tingling his spidey-sense that this about to get dangerous.

“I want you to _kill_ him—” It was sharp and pointed, and with this man’s stance, an intimidation tactic. Peter wasn’t intimidated, though. Feeling was back in his fingers and toes, and the risk of hypothermia was creeping out the door.

“—and I want his head for my trophy room.”

Um, okay, ew, for one.

Two, “I don’t kill people—”

And then there was a very sharp, stabbing pain in his side, doubling him over and he collapsed to his knees, holding his side where it hurt— _stabbed? By a knife? Maybe his senses had been warning him of that…_

“I knew you’d say that.” And then a beat of silence in which Pete drew back his hand to see blood coating his glove.

“I’ll give you half an hour to think on it—” he nodded up towards his henchmen by the door who approached Peter, “—and when you come back—” they started dragging him out the door again, but he still heard the end of that statement, “—I expect a different answer.”

He had every intention to fight back, but before he knew it, he was thrown into that freezer again— _glimpsing the temp gauge by the door that said -10 and yikes, oh man, jinkies, -10_. He caught himself on his hands and knees, but his hands were both coated in warm, wet blood that almost instantly froze to the tiled floor. His breath was visible and the shivers immediately came back.

His ribs on his side ached but only dully, and his glove tore a bit as he ripped it from the ground to cover his side. His healing will close it over, but how long would he have to wait in this cold before it did?

He knew contact with the ground would only chill him faster, so he ripped his other hand off and stood up, grunting and gritting his teeth—and jerked back, stumbling and sliding, landing on his ass. That frozen face had only been a matter of _inches_ away from his own, and that was a sight he never wanted to look upon again.

He really needed to pee, but that was a horrible idea given the situation, and he was starting to feel sleepy, which he amassed to the blood flowing away from his brain— _and out his stab wound on his side, God, get your mind out of the gutter._

His bum was already on the floor, and he was so extremely cold that removing it couldn’t possibly make that much of a difference, so he scooted back to the wall and leaned against it. It was frigid, soaking through the joke of protection that was his suit immediately, but not bothering much else.

That alone was concerning—that he felt no additional cold from it.

Hypothermia must be setting in— _negative ten degrees_ —but he couldn’t remember all the symptoms, so hopefully it wasn’t bad yet.

The feeling in his hands and feet abandoned him again and his little pinky toes downright _hurt_ , but he couldn’t really rub them through his boots. He settled for just rubbing his hands up and down his arms to keep moving— _also for the friction since friction created heat and the heat just made the desire to pee even stronger._

Distantly, he knew that standing up and moving his legs would help, but he was exhausted, too tired to move much, and quickly, rubbing his arms became a struggle.

_How long had he been in here?_

It felt like an eternity. How could the half-hour not be up yet?

Where he previously just couldn’t feel them, that changed where his nose hurt, his ears hurt, and— _was it even possible?_ —his _hair_ hurt.

His muscles hurt, and he didn’t want to keep moving his arms anymore, and to be honest, he wasn’t feeling all that cold either. Maybe they were turning the heat on to that he wouldn’t die…

Either way, the lack of cold was comforting, and the shivers stopped. His arms were so tired they were stiffening so he extended his legs and laid his arms across his lap. He was so, so tired; his eyes were closing themselves, and nodding off was almost welcomed— _almost because he knew he needed to be awake when they come back to get him so he could fight them off_ —but sleep was tempting, sleep was warm—

The door opened beside him, which was odd because he didn’t open it, so why would it open?

Two towers came in—no, wait, they weren’t towers, they were people— _Attack on Titan!!—_ no wait, they were normal size? They were bending down to grab him—“He’s not even shivering”—“Think he’s dead?”—and then dragging him out, and _oh, God, it was hot_ , they were dragging him into a desert—“Nah way, he was only in there thirty minutes! He’s Spider-Man. He ain’t gon’ die from a little chill.”

Through a kitchen and up some stairs, and then finally they dropped him onto a hardwood floor. This all seemed so familiar. Wasn’t he just here? Like yesterday? Maybe the day before?

There was another giant in this room, and he squatted down to become normal-sized and started speaking, “Your muscles must be hurting severely by now. How are you feeling?”

Were they? He couldn’t tell—no, wait! Yeah, they were pretty tender. Everything felt like that though, wasn’t just his muscles.

How was he feeling? This man freezes him and then turns the heat up and up and drags him into a desert. He wasn’t feeling too hot right now— _haha, hot, yeah he was, he was burning up—no, he was freezing—both? At the same time?_

The man chuckled and stood up, walking back to lean against the desk, and Peter glanced up to see what was funny, eyes slightly blurry.

“Decline of mental awareness, slurring your words. You’re hypothermic already!”

Was he? He didn’t feel that way, and he was slurring his words? He didn’t even know he was speaking…

“Just give me your word that you’ll—“ the man hesitated, looking out the window, maybe trying to find some birds, maybe watching the clouds, who knew, “—treat Tombstone the way we discussed, and you’re free to go.”

He was supposed to… what? Take care of a tombstone? Whose?

But yeah, that was easy, he could do that no problem!

The look in the man’s eyes seemed to stare into his soul as he said, “Perfect,” in such a sinister tone it sent shivers down Peter’s spine—shivers that didn’t seem to let up, and he realized he was cold again. He wanted to rub his arms, but he couldn’t feel his hands and feet, and his arms were so stiff he didn’t even want to move them.

The man started speaking again, and Peter looked back up, but the man was just speaking to his henchmen at the door, “Ten more minutes in the box, then we’ll take him to the hospital. I wanna see how bad he gets.”

One of the men laughed— _what was so funny?_ —and they both grabbed his arms again, dragging him back down the way they’d come.

The last thought Peter had before they tossed him back into the freezer was _Why did they expect him to do something bad in some box?_


End file.
